Blue Jay Slayer

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BLUE JAY SLAYER whispers and shouts at us but never tells us what to think. It is dark at times, yes, but not what you'd expect: playful sometimes, angry sometimes, reticent when necessary. It's brimming with curses and gifts. When Matt Hart declares "The grass doesn't grow where I take you" you know—just know—that he isn't lying. He tells us Ken Henson is not who he appears to be, which is correct. Henson certainly gives us glimpses of who he may be with his illustrations of the flaming reality of the dark side but without the hellish clichés. Well, maybe there are a few, but those, of course, are intentional. Hart digs up the dead with his words and points to what we think is real, while making us question what we initially thought. BJS will take you like you could get permanently lost in that world and never come back, but you do. You come back feeling exuberant; you come back feeling absolved.

"Blue Jay Slayer was a pleasure for me to read and visually take in. The drawings are bold, brazen, hauntingly beautiful and tragic at times. I found the poetry to be thought provoking and heavy with textured wordplay...traveling far, painting a picture all on their own."--Dave Lombardo, drum god and co-founding member of Slayer“Poems that will tickle and irritate your brain served alongside artwork that will soothe and delight it.”--AliceBag, singer of The Bags and Goddess 13"Blue Jay Slayer serves as a guide between the mutable worlds of dream and wishful/dreadful thinking - call it daydream, call it reality television, call it the world we all occupy during moments of existential crisis - when everything outside of our periphery becomes anything: the "daughter asleep or on fire." The sensory cacophony includes illustrations of human figures missing parts of themselves, fractured by overlapping borders and colors, simultaneously inviting and grotesque, reminding us that sometimes - though we never admit it to ourselves - "the goal is to become less, / not more, human being." Human nature and desire in its truest, purest form. These poems and illustrations invite us to "take the light / from delight and make it obvious" which I'm all too happy to do when the work is this damn good." --Gary Jackson, poet and author of Missing You, Metropolis